Pembroke man is running for a cause

Saturday

Apr 12, 2014 at 12:00 PM

For most of the day, Sgt. Shawn Burns of the Boston Police Department said last year’s Boston Marathon was the same as any other. But, as he made his way to the finish line to congratulate a friend as he crossed the line, everything changed.

Mark Burridge mburridge@wickedlocal.com

For most of the day, Sgt. Shawn Burns of the Boston Police Department said last year’s Boston Marathon was the same as any other. But, as he made his way to the finish line to congratulate a friend as he crossed the line, everything changed.

“I wasn’t even a block from where the explosions happened,” he said. “At first I thought a transformer had exploded, but then I saw the smoke, and I think I even said it out loud, ‘that’s a bomb.’”

Burns, a Pembroke resident, said he has covered the marathon many times. Typically, he covers the Brighton/Alston area, but when on marathon day, many officers are called in to become resident ‘jacks-of all-trades.’

Burns said the duties that he typically has to perform on a marathon day are wide ranging, but the main point to his job is to make sure the marathon runs smoothly. He gives directions to people from out of town, he helps get traffic moving, in general he assists the public. Last year, he had to assist in a totally different way that he said went by so quickly and suddenly that he questioned its reality.

“After it was over, I kept saying to myself, ‘did that really just happen?’” he said.

What happened was two explosions on either side of the street by the finish line.

Burns rushed up to the scene after the first bomb went off, he said he had been moving through a group of runners who had just finished the race, wearing their silver warmth blankets and trying to recoup from the long run.

After the bomb went off, the crowd streamed in both directions, Burns fought his way towards the explosion and saw blast victims all around him. One in particular stood out to him.

“There was a young lady with long black hair on the ground, she wasn’t moving much, she was pale, and there was a lot of blood around her,” he said. “There were two guys kneeling beside her, trying to bandage what looked like an injury on her leg.”

Burns said he had to take the bandage off her leg, so he could assess the actual damage that had been done. When he uncovered the wound, he saw what he described as a large gaping hole in the girl’s inner thigh.

“I thought maybe the ephemeral artery had been severed, and I told the guys to put their hand on the wound, and whatever they do, don’t remove them,” he said.

The girl lying on the ground was Sydney Corcoran. She had gone to the race with her parents. In the blast, Sydney’s mother Celeste lost both her legs, and Burns said her father had put tourniquets on both legs, probably saving her life. He said the two men that stopped to help Sydney probably saved her life too.

After being pulled away to help in a few other areas, Burns made his way back to Sydney. He said at that point he wasn’t sure if she was going to live through the incident, so he just kept talking to her.

“I knew she was losing blood, and I didn’t want her to go into shock,” he said. “And, I didn’t know if she would live or not, so I wanted to comfort her.”

Sydney was placed on a gurney and rushed off to be helped, Burns rushed back to the finish line, but by then most of the victims had been removed. He said the police moved pretty quickly into running a crime scene. He would stay on duty until late that night, when he was ordered to go home.

“I was there for hours to help supervise the crime scene,” he said. They sent me home between 11:30 p.m. and 12 a.m., I was on duty for well past 24 hours.”

Burns said he felt connected with Sydney, and has since kept in contact with her. While she isn’t completely back to 100 percent, Burns said she was going to make a full recovery. He is also making an effort to help the family try to restore some normalcy to life.

This year, Burns is running the marathon for the first time. He is running for the Boston Police, which is raising money for “Cops for Kids with Cancer,” but he is also running for Team Corcoran. The team is looking to raise $50,000 to help pay for the life time expenses of Sydney’s mother’s prosthetics.

As far as fears or hesitance about returning to the scene of the bombings, Burns said he has none.

“I can’t wait, I have no reservations,” he said. “It’ll help with the healing process, I think when I cross the finish line, it’ll give me some closure.”